


but first they must catch you

by deluxemycroft



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (its never mentioned but im saying it now), (kinda), 5+1 Things, Bisexual Clint Barton, Bittersweet, Brain Damage, Deaf Clint Barton, Gay Bucky Barnes, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Clint Barton, Kidnapping, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Mention of attempted suicide, Permanent Injury, Super Soldier Serum, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier Clint Barton, using last names because first names are too intimate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 17:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: HYDRA found Clint Barton before SHIELD. Many years later, Bucky finds Clint on his farm.5 times Bucky remembers, and 1 time Clint remembers for him.





	but first they must catch you

**Author's Note:**

> not beta'd, just read over by me.
> 
> i think this was my first ever attempt at a 5+1, hope it turned out well!

HYDRA has fallen. 

Barnes isn’t entirely sure what to do with that information. What he does know, however, is that he has to get somewhere safe. 

He woke up two days ago in an abandoned underground base. He’d never woken up alone before. There’d always been scientists and soldiers around. He couldn’t even remember the last time he was truly alone. He’d punched his way out of the cryo machine, stood in the empty, dark room for a few minutes, and when no one had come to tell him what to do, he found supplies and he’d left. 

His training was that he was supposed to find a commanding officer and report his status, and if there was no contact, he was supposed to self-destruct. 

Barnes was pretty much on the side of ‘fuck that’, so he’d started walking. He’d learned along the way that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD and that both the organizations had gone down. Barnes doesn’t care. 

He’s done with it all. He’s tired. 

So, he walks.

The protein bars in his bag remind him of someone. Not someone safe, just someone he knows. He remembers blond hair and a sharp smile and a quick wit. He remembers a name, too, but it’s almost like he can’t quite touch it; whenever he feels the shape of it in his mind and reaches out for it, it flits away. 

He writes down everything he remembers. Even if it’s little moments—_I was in a forest_, or _Cars used to look different_, or _Did I have a sister?_—he writes it all down. Nothing is unimportant. He has an entire page of _The sky is blue. The sky is blue. The sky is blue._ that he looks at when his mind hurts and colors aren’t something that come easily. 

He steals notebooks and fills them up, goes through pen after pen, writes until his hand cramps so bad he can’t even unbend his fingers. 

There’s always more. He remembers the missions, the feel of taking a life, his screams—

After awhile, he remembers it was not only him screaming. 

There was someone else.

That brings him here, to where he is standing in front of a small farmhouse. It looks comfortable, well lived in. It’s surrounded on all sides by open fields, and beyond them, trees. 

He’s been watching the house for a week. One man lives here, along with his dog. They seem to have a comfortable life with a mishmash routine, and there is something about this man that sets Barnes’s teeth on edge while also making his ever-racing mind pause, just for a moment. 

The man is on his porch, reading a book and drinking coffee. The dog doesn’t even bark as Barnes walks up. 

“How’s it goin’, man?” the man asks. “Glad you finally decided to come on up to the house.” He doesn’t look up from his book as he takes a sip of coffee. “You’ve been watching me for what, three, four days?”

Barnes glowers at him. He’s been in the woods for a _week_, Barton was always so unobservant—

“Of course,” Barton continues before Barnes can say anything, “I first found you out there a week ago, didn’t I?”

This time, Barton looks up from his book. 

Anyone else would’ve taken a reflexive step back. Barnes doesn’t remember, but he knows he was there when _that_ happened to Barton’s face. 

“You were asleep,” Barton tells him, and he looks amused. He shuts his book with a soft _thud_. “Thought about killin’ ya, decided against it.” He jumps to his feet. “Well, man, come on inside. I’ve been waitin’ for ya.”

With that, Barton goes inside, leaving the porch door open for him. 

“Dog’s name is Lucky,” Barton calls back.

The dog wags his tail. Barnes looks down at him. Mutt only has one eye. Guess he’s lucky he didn’t lose the other. 

With careful, measured steps, Barnes walks into the house, the porch door slamming shut behind him.

* * *

Barton spends most of his free time reading. He fixes up the house some, does an abysmal job cooking before Barnes finally bans him from the kitchen—_It’s my house, Barnes!; It’s your house but now it’s my kitchen. You’re gonna burn the damn place down. Can’t even boil water right._—and will occasionally even take his dog for a walk. He hasn’t picked up a bow in the week Barnes has been living there. 

It’s driving Barnes fucking nuts. 

Barnes doesn’t remember much. He remembers more small moments than big overarching scenes from his life. He _knows_ Barton like he knows his own bones, but he doesn’t remember how they met, how they know each other, how Barton got those scars, _anything_. He’s tried asking Barton about it, but Barton always answers with something shitty like, _How the hell would I know? You’re not the only one with memory problems, dumbass,_ and that usually shuts Barnes up for awhile. 

He’s tried picking up the bow Barton has mounted up on the wall, but Barton threw a knife at him, the blade embedding itself hilt-deep in the wall right in front of his nose. Barnes had looked down the length of it and then across the room to Barton, who looked fucking _furious_, and Barnes had taken a step back out of some deep instilled training that he couldn’t even remember. 

“Don’t,” Barton had said, and Barnes hadn’t. 

Barnes is sitting out on the front porch on the porch swing, enjoying the breeze in his hair, trying to remember if he knows how to draw. If he does, he’s not good at it. He has an image of Barton in his head that he can’t quite shape his mind around, and since he can’t project his thoughts into a TV screen or anything, drawing is his next best bet. 

Barton is sunbathing on the front lawn. Well, sunbathing is a generous term. The scars on his face and neck and chest are too sensitive to be out in direct sunlight, so Barton has covered all of them with a sheet, which means he’s laying out in the yard underneath a sheet. He seems to be content, though, and Lucky is curled up underneath the sheet right next to him. 

Barnes doesn’t understand how he feels safe here. By all accounts, he shouldn’t. He’s out in the open, unprotected, and his sightlines are interrupted by the trees. Hell, there’s even a small hill creating behind the house, so there could be snipers—

“How is it I can hear you thinking from all the way over here?” Barton calls, voice a bit muffled by the sheet. “Can’t believe I have to tell you to shut up when you’re not even saying anything.”

Barnes doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know what to say to a lot of what Barton says. His instinct is to demand Barton’s security protocols, to figure out exit points and strategies for when they’re inevitably attacked, but—

“I wish I was still deaf!” Barton exclaims, sitting up and twisting around to glare at him. “Can you just enjoy the fucking sun for once? Be happy you’re not locked up underground?”

“Still deaf?” Barnes asks, watching as the sheet falls away from Barton’s face and then slips down to puddle around his waist. 

Barton isn’t wearing a shirt. His scars continue down his chest and over his stomach. Barnes is suddenly overcome with the need to touch them, and he squeezes his pen hard enough to break it. 

“Yeah,” Barton spits out, still glaring at him, “HYDRA fixed it somehow. Fuckin’ Nazis,” he mutters, yanking the sheet up and wrapping it around his shoulders. Lucky barks at him but Barton doesn’t seem to hear. He pushes to his feet and makes his way over to the porch, stretching in the sunlight. 

Barnes watches him, and remembers something else, something very clear about himself. Something he denied for a long time and doesn’t see a reason to any longer. 

He looks back down at his journal and turns to a new page. He picks up a new pen and carefully writes, _I like men_.

Barton sits on the porch swing next to him and mercifully doesn’t say anything about the way Barnes’s hands are shaking.

* * *

More memories return as the days go by. They all come in flashes, glimmers of who he was, of things he’s done, of people he’s killed, and Barnes learns that he was the Winter Soldier for far longer than he was ever anyone else. Bucky died when he fell from that train. Someone different was dragged away. 

He wants to talk to Barton about it, mostly because there isn’t anyone else around and also because he knows that if he asks, Barton will sit and listen and won’t say anything. But he has to ask. Barton isn’t a mind reader. 

Barnes remembers that he likes to cook. Barton finds some cookbooks for him, gets some groceries for him, and Barnes figures himself out as he figures out various dishes. He likes to cook but hasn’t done it in seven or so decades, so he’s not very good. 

He’s better than Barton, though. At least he hasn’t managed to burn down the house. 

Time passes strangely for him. Cryo messed with his perception of time so badly that he can’t figure out if he slept for a few hours or for a few weeks or for even a few years. He’ll take a nap and can’t understand that he woke up during the same day. 

Barton seems to have endless patience with certain things, and absolutely none when it comes to others. But for Barnes’s mind rebelling against him, for when he doesn’t know where he is or what his name is or what year it is, Barton is always quiet and calm and reassuring. 

Then, of course, once Barnes gets his head on straight, then Barton is asking him how much his metal arm can lift and if he could lift a truck and sneaking up behind him to try to braid his hair and slipping into the kitchen when Barnes isn’t looking and starting the coffee maker and _somehow_ setting the coffee maker on fire and scorching up the walls before he managed to put the fire out. 

Barton gets more tolerable by the day. He’s still the biggest pain in the ass that Barnes has ever met, but sometimes, he’ll say something just out of this world stupid and Barnes will find himself smiling. 

He’s curious about why Barton is living out here. His own curiosity kind of comes as a surprise; Barnes doesn’t even know the last time he _was_ curious. He doesn’t know the last time he was anything other than an automaton. He’s constantly of half a mind to ask Barton if he even _is_ a human being, because he doesn’t damn feel like he is, and he’s got the metal arm to prove it. 

Because he’s curious, he asks. 

Barton sprawls a lot. He takes up more space than Barnes really thinks is reasonable for one human being to take up. So, he’s sprawled across the kitchen table when Barnes asks him why he’s living out here in the middle of fuck off nowhere with just a dog for company. 

Barton snorts at him. “SHIELD put me up out here,” he says, sounding both amused and annoyed. “They couldn’t figure out what else to do with me, so they asked me if I’d rather live out in the country or on top of a mountain. Figured I’d get better wifi here.”

“You don’t even own a computer,” Barnes replies. He’s been in all the rooms. Barton owns a lot of dirty clothes and a lot of books and a lot of garbage, but Barnes hasn’t even seen a phone, let alone a computer. 

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Barton tells him, like that means anything. He lifts his head up off the kitchen table enough to take a slurp of coffee and then drops it back down. He writes down SHIELD in his notebook and wonders what else he knows about the organization that his brain won’t let him remember. 

Barton sighs, and then sighs again. Barnes glares at him.

“You know,” Barton says, sitting up straight, and he props a hand up on the table so he can lean his chin on it. His hand is scarred too. What on Earth happened to him? “If you need to know something, I can probably tell you.”

“How did we meet?” Barnes blurts out practically before Barton is done talking. “How do I know you?”

Barton looks amused. He takes a sip of coffee and rolls it around in his mouth before swallowing it. “HYDRA kidnapped me a couple decades ago,” he tells Barnes, his voice quiet like he’s admitting a secret. “I was a kid. Think about 17 or so. HYDRA had heard of me, heard I was a real good shot with a bow.”

Barnes remembers that. It’s very firmly lodged into his skull, right next to Barton’s name: Hawkeye, World’s Greatest Marksman.

“They wanted to recruit me. I told ‘em to fuck off. So they, uh, took me.” Barton shakes his head like he’s embarrassed. “They gave me some serum that’s similar to the soldier shit that Cap got, and then fried my head with that fucking _Chair_.”

All the muscles in Barnes’s back clench with the mention of that machine. “Cap?” he asks instead of screaming the way he wants to.

Barton doesn’t even look bothered. “Yeah, Captain America. Steve Rogers. Ring a bell?”

Barnes carefully writes down the name but shakes his head. It doesn’t mean anything. 

“Anyway, they got my head mixed up enough and decided to start sending me on missions.” Barton gives him a significant look. 

For a second, Barnes doesn’t get it. At all. Then he remembers that same sharp grin, those shoulders striding away in front of him, Barton’s biceps flexing as he aimed his bow. It’s a thousand different flashes that make up a picture: Barton was another Soldier. 

Then, when he looks at Barton again, he remembers: Barton was his Soldier. HYDRA had given him one thing of his own and then used it to control him and break him even further. 

Barnes doesn’t say anything. Neither does Barton. They sit and look at each other and Barnes remembers so many tiny, microscopic seconds:

_No problem, Boss, Barton says, and picks up the rifle and settles it into the pocket of his shoulder. Next to him, Barnes does the same with his own rifle._

_One of the scientists—Barnes doesn’t know his name, he doesn’t know anyone’s name, doesn’t even know his own name—pushes Barton to the seat directly across from the Chair. He’s going to watch, the scientist said, and this is going to be your punishment for failure. Then we’re going to wipe him. And he won’t—_

He won’t? It’s gone. The memory ends there. Whatever it was, Barnes can’t grasp the rest of it. But he’s breathing hard and his eyes are screwed shut and he feels on the verge of shrieking. 

Barton doesn’t touch him, which is good, because Barnes would’ve punched him if he had. But Barton just sits there and waits for him to figure himself out, and that’s better. 

“Wanna know anything else?” Barton asks, and he has a small, wry smile on his face. 

Barnes shakes his head and closes his journal. He’s not good, but he’ll make it through.

* * *

“Sure,” Barton says, and Barnes sits up, heart pounding in his chest. “I can’t say I think it’s a great idea, but it sure is an idea.” There’s a pause, and then Barton says, “No, sir, he’s got no idea. Ergo, the whole bad idea philosophy.” Then he snorts and mutters something that’s probably mean under his breath and Barnes looks over the back of the couch to see him end a phone call. Barton sighs to himself and slides the phone into his pocket and then leans forward to put his head in his hands. 

It’s Barnes’s first instinct to think the worst of him. It would be easy to convince himself that Barton has been a HYDRA plant, that this was all a scheme to get him back, that he never should’ve stayed here. But this is Barton—sure, he’s the world’s biggest jag, and Barnes wants to punch him half the time, but he’s also kind and funny and loyal—so instead, Barnes says his name. 

Barton sighs at him and then clambers _over_ the kitchen table instead of walking around it and joins Barnes on the living room couch. He looks troubled. 

“Didn’t know you had a phone,” Barnes says, trying to keep his tone calm and conversational. By the look Barton gives him, he’s not very good at it. 

Barton shrugs, kicks his feet up onto the coffee table. They’re bare and maybe the only part of the archer that isn’t scarred. Barnes finds himself wanting to run his fingers across the tops of Barton’s feet, wants to know the texture of his skin. He clenches his teeth at the thought. “Showed up in a box a few days ago. Guess SHIELD wants to keep in contact.” There’s more, but Barnes doesn’t press for it. Barton likes to talk, and usually eventually ends up saying what Barnes wants to hear. 

They’re quiet for awhile. 

“That was Cap,” Barton finally tells him, giving Barnes a look like _Cap_ is supposed to mean anything significant to him. It doesn’t. He knows there’s a guy called Captain America, but he doesn’t really care. 

“Is that so,” Barnes replies, picking his journal and a pen off the coffee table and writing down _Cap?_.

“He wants to come see you,” Barton continues. “If you’re feeling amenable, o’course.”

“Is he gonna try to kill me?”

Barton considers that. There’s a beam of sunlight cutting across the table, and Barton scoots down a bit on the couch to catch the sun on his toes. The couch is small enough that Barnes can feel his body heat, and he shifts uncomfortably at the thought. Barton doesn’t seem to notice or care. 

“I doubt it,” Barton finally says, “and if he did, I bet the both of us could take him down. Or at least incapacitate him for long enough that we’d be able to get you away.”

Barnes doesn’t know anything about Captain America and doesn’t know if that’s true or not, so he nods. “Alright, then,” he replies. “But he should bring some groceries with him. We’re running low.”

Barton gives him a devilish smile and drags his phone out of his pocket, tapping away on the screen. “Wish I could see his face,” Barton mutters, and then that’s the end of that. 

Captain America stops by two days later, bringing an entire car worth of groceries with him. 

He looks at Barnes like he knows him. It makes him uncomfortable and he knows he’s glaring but can’t really stop it. His face just does that sometimes. 

He and Cap—_Call me Steve_—bring in the bags from the car together while Barton lounges on the porch swing and complains about the sun being hot. When Barnes points out that the entire point of the sun is to emit light and heat, Barton glowers at him and then pouts. Barnes feels bad and reheats a slice of pizza for him. Barton grins at him after taking a bite and Barnes smiles back, a bit uncomfortable with the way he feels like he’d do anything for Barton to grin at him like that.

Rogers watches all of this with a small frown on his face. Barnes doesn’t know him, and by the looks of him, isn’t sure he wants to.

“When I was growing up,” Rogers tells him while they’re putting away the groceries—Rogers is really bad at it, and can’t figure out where anything goes, so he just pulls something out of the bags and then stands uncomfortably in Barnes’s way until Barnes just takes it from him and puts it away himself—“we never had this much food. Always a couple meals away from going hungry.”

“Is that so,” Barnes replies without really thinking about it, opening a cabinet to put away a bag of chips, and they’re not even the chips that Barton likes, so why the hell did Rogers bring them, “I don’t remember what it was like when I was younger.” He pauses, looks at the back of Barton’s head through the window, and then says, “I don’t remember much of anything, actually.”

Barnes stands there, stiff as a board, like Rogers is going to yell at him. But Rogers just gives him a look like that was the last thing he wanted to hear, and then he just nods. “Is Clint helping? You, um, don’t have to stay here if you don’t want. I have a place where you can go.”

He gets that same almost-betrayed feeling he got when he overheard Barton on the phone. But he’s better than that, he thinks. He can think it through. If Barton wanted him gone, he’d just tell him. He wouldn’t make some convoluted plan to get Barnes out of his house by asking some other guy to come see if he wants to leave. If Barton wanted him gone, he’d knock him unconscious and dump him on the other side of the country. So this is something that Barton didn’t know about, or maybe it’s even something Barton didn’t want him to do, and that’s why Rogers waited until it was just them in the kitchen to ask. 

So Barnes calls out Barton’s name, loud enough to be heard outside, and Rogers winces as Barton comes inside. So he was right, then. 

“Rogers here is saying I can go with him,” Barnes tells him, and Barton gives Rogers a dirty look. “But I’m pretty good here, so I don’t think I need to go anywhere.”

Barnes puts away the last of the groceries and then picks all of the plastic bags up and puts them in the cabinet under the sink. 

“You really don’t remember?” Rogers asks him, almost desperate. “You really don’t remember me?”

“I don’t remember shit,” Barnes bites back. “If I knew you before, which I don’t know _how_ I would, since HYDRA had me for 70 fuckin’ years, then I don’t know you now. I know Barton and I don’t know much else.”

“I’m Steve,” Rogers tells him. “You’re my best friend, Bucky.”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

* * *

Rogers spends the night. He sleeps upstairs in the unused guest room—Barnes and Barton switch off sleeping on the couch and in the master bedroom. Barnes didn’t realize it was weird until Rogers had uncomfortably asked if they were sleeping together. Barton had just shrugged and Barnes had frozen. 

Barnes can’t sleep with someone new in the house. He keeps thinking about Rogers calling him Bucky, like he was someone he knew, like he was someone besides the Soldier, like he’d had a life before they’d taken him. Whoever Bucky had been, he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d tried explaining and Rogers had tried to listen, but whatever Barnes had said, it was obvious it wasn’t what Rogers wanted to hear.

Barton had hovered in the background during all of it, digging through the cabinets and talking to himself under his breath. Barnes wouldn’t have been able to get through the conversation with Rogers without him there. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done, but he wouldn’t have managed to deal with Rogers _looking_ at him like he was supposed to know him. 

Barnes remembered something, remembered a cold apartment and his hand on a thin, trembling shoulder, remembered cooking soup over a shitty stove and bringing it to a small, shivering form. He thinks that must have been Rogers, but it _can’t_ have been—the kid he remembers was tiny and always fuckin’ sick and Rogers is huge and burly and looks like he could rip a tree in half with his bare hands. 

He’d stolen the phone out of Barton’s pocket—Barton probably knew he was going to take it before Barnes had even decided to, but Barton hadn’t said anything—and after figuring out how to get to the internet, he Googles _Steve Rogers_.

Barnes reads about him. The house feels weird and he feels weird and what he’s reading is weird.

From what he can understand, he really does know Rogers. Or some part of him knows Rogers. Or he knew him. He doesn’t know the difference.

There isn’t a single damn memory in his head that confirms anything he’s reading. All he gets are flickers.

If any of this is true, he decides, and it’s not information planted by HYDRA or SHIELD or some other shadowy organization, then maybe he’s not meant to remember any of it. Maybe he left Rogers behind and he has his own path to make. He doesn’t know if that’s the right decision, but it’s the one he’s going to make.

He tells Rogers when he comes downstairs a few hours later that if he ever leaves Barton’s farm, it won’t be to go to where Rogers wants. Rogers nods and tries to cook some eggs and ends up setting off the smoke alarm. Barton grabs it off the wall, pulls out the batteries, and gets to fixing the problem.

Rogers lets himself be pushed to the kitchen table, sits there and watches him. It makes Barnes uncomfortable, and he shifts awkwardly on his feet as he scrubs the charred egg mess out of the pan. 

Barton yells his name from upstairs.

“It’s alright,” Barnes yells back. “Go back to bed.”

He cocks his head as Barton walks across the floor upstairs, the house creaking as Barton climbs back into bed.

“How long have you been here?” Rogers asks him.

Barnes doesn’t know how to answer that. He could look through his journals, see if he wrote down the date. He could see if Barton knows.

“Awhile,” he replies, uncomfortable about it. “How long have you known Barton?”

“I was the one who pulled him out of the fire,” Rogers says back, and Barnes stiffens. Fire? He—

There was a fire?

He doesn’t remember a fire.

“What happened?” Barnes asks, turning around to look at Rogers, who takes a sip from his glass. “Was I there?”

Rogers sighs. Barnes has a feeling he’s the type of guy who sighs a lot. “We think so. It was, um, a HYDRA base that we were infiltrating. Apparently, HYDRA got wind of it, and sent Barton to stop us. We think you were there too, but, well, there wasn’t any proof.” He gives Barnes a significant look, like Barnes is supposed to know anything about anything. “He set up remote detonation devices, and one of them malfunctioned while he was still in there. It went off and blew up the whole building with him inside. He managed to take out almost a dozen HYDRA operatives, really set the organization back on their heels for awhile. But he was buried under a few tons of steel and iron and concrete, and the bombs kept going off. One of them went off right under him and all his clothes got set on fire. Second and third degree burns all over. I found him and pulled him out before it could kill him.”

Barnes leans back against the kitchen counter, crosses his arms over his chest, and blinks. Huh. He hadn’t expected that.

He’s not sure what he expected.

“I figured he just fell out of a tree into a bunch of spikes or something,” he finally grumbles. “Or someone set him on fire because he never shuts up.”

Rogers snorts at that.

He thinks he was there when Barton blew up that compound. He thinks he knows that none of the bombs malfunctioned, and he thinks he knows that Barton tried to kill himself and all those HYDRA agents and even Barnes himself.

Rogers leaves a few hours later. Barnes is grateful for it.

Barton comes downstairs awhile after Rogers is gone and joins Barnes on the living room couch. He kicks his legs up onto the arm of the couch and lays with his head just an inch away from Barnes’s leg. Barnes wants to run his hand through his hair more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.

“He pulled me out of the fire,” Barton says, “but he didn’t do anything more than that. He pulled me out and got me to a doctor and I saw him a month later when I was locked in a cell at SHIELD headquarters. They thought I’d been a Soldier outta my own free will. They thought a lot of things.”

Barton sighs.

Barton doesn’t stop him when Barnes slowly reaches out and touches his metal fingers to the scars on Barton’s face.

“I don’t remember,” Barnes whispers.

“You’re not the only one,” Barton tells him, his voice just as soft. “Some days I don’t remember my own name.” He pushes his foot against the arm of the couch so he scoots up and his head is in Barnes’s lap. His eyes shut and he falls back asleep.

Barnes sits there and leans his head back against the back of the couch and lets his fingers pet through Barton’s hair and down over the scars on his face and back up again. When he stops, Barton makes an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, and Barnes smiles and starts up again.

_Did they put you in the Chair?_ he wants to ask. _Did they take away every part of you until you were nothing more than clay to be molded? Did they make you into a monster like me?_

He thinks he already knows the answers.

* * *

Barnes has been living at Barton’s farmhouse for a year when he sits up in bed, sheets falling away from his chest, and he blinks. Next to him, Barton blinks awake, and at the end of the bed, Lucky lifts his head and looks at him. The room is colorless and pale in the predawn light.

Barnes picks up his journal off the bedside table and opens it, squints down at his scrawled memories and all the things he forgets every day and all the tiny little moments he’s remembered, and he finally asks what he’s been wondering every day for a year.

“Why did I come here?”

Barton shifts closer under the sheets, pushing his head into Barnes’s side, and he mutters, “Because you’re in love with me, dummy.”

Oh.

“For how long?”

“Probably forever,” Barton replies, peeking over the side of Barnes’s journal and looking up at him. He looks as good as he’s ever looked, still all busted up and scarred and more fucking beautiful than anything Barnes has ever seen. “You ever remember why HYDRA picked me up?”

“No,” he says, because he doesn’t. All he remembers is one day, they pulled him out of cryo, and there was Barton, another Soldier, and they’d been together ever since. 

“Neither do I,” Barton chuckles, and Barnes snorts at him and puts his journal back on the bedside table and takes Barton’s face in his hands and kisses him.

Barton smiles against his mouth and kisses him back.

He knows he’s probably never going to remember any more than what he has. The flashes of memory don’t come like they used to; he thinks that this is as good as it’ll ever get. He doesn’t need to know anything else about himself.

Later, they get out of bed and get dressed, and Barton goes outside to take Lucky for a walk while Barnes starts the coffee maker and starts to cook breakfast. He looks out the window and sees Barton and Lucky chasing each other on the front lawn, and a few minutes later, the two of them barrel inside, both of them panting. Barton comes up next to him and takes his cup of coffee and murmurs a _Thank you, James_ against his mouth and Barnes smiles at him.

He knows the color of the sky is the same color as Barton’s eyes. He knows where the coffee mugs are and the type of chips that Barton likes to eat. He knows that whatever part of himself he managed to claw back from whatever HYDRA did to him is probably all he’s ever going to get. He knows that the two of them suffered beyond any sort of comprehension and came out scarred and different and someone else.

“You’re welcome,” he says back, and he doesn’t need anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please leave kudos and comments!
> 
> follow me:  
tumblr: @deluxemycroft  
twitter: @whenhedied


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